Congo

Responding to the UK government’s commitment to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040, Mark Dummett, Business and Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International, said:
“This is good news for the environment and for air quality, but drivers should be aware that while electric cars may be green, they’re not always clean.
“Our research shows that there is a significant risk of cobalt mined by children and adults in appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo ending up in the batteries of electric cars. Workers in the DRC, earning as little as one dollar a day and at risk of fatal accidents and illness, must not pay the price for the UK’s shift to electric cars.
“Drivers will want to know that their new cars are not linked to the suffering of child labourers in the DRC, but there is a worrying lack of transparency across the car manufacturing industry, with many leading names failing to disclose information about their cobalt supply chains.

Tens of thousands of civilians fled in fear this week as the armed group M23 marched into the eastern Congolese city of Goma – worsening an already dire human rights situation.

Following the city’s fall to the M23 on Tuesday, many more civilians are fleeing and are left with no assistance in an area where they are at significant risk of being caught in crossfire as hostilities intensify.

Amnesty International has documented numerous crimes under international law and other human rights violations committed in the course of fighting between M23 and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army in recent months.

For the past 15 years, civilians caught up in the conflict have suffered a range of abuses – women and girls in particular have being targeted, with rape and other forms of sexual violence being widely reported.